Google “Keep” – Keep it or leave it?

Google finally launched Google Keep and actually a little earlier than I thought. A few days earlier the product “leaked” throughout the internet so we all knew more or less what Google Keep is about.

So, what is Google Keep?

With Google Keep you can create, store and keep track of notes, photos and lists you need to remember. Yes, something like Evernote though not so complex. Keeping track of your paper notes is a really tough job since our lives become more complicated and we need to remember more things each day. Note tracking apps help us keep all our notes together in one place without cluttering our work-space with small papers of every kind.

Google Keep Grid View – Web Version

Unfortunately sometimes is much easier writing a note on a paper that’s next to you (e.g. when you’re talking on the phone and need to write something down) than using your smartphone. Google Keep makes this easier by adopting a simple and fast to use user interface.

Google Keep List View – Web Version

Read the official description from Google Play

Quickly capture what’s on your mind and recall it easily wherever you are. Create a checklist, enter a voice note or snap a photo and annotate it. Everything you add is instantly available on all your devices – desktop and mobile.

With Google Keep you can:

Keep track of your thoughts via notes, lists and photos

Have voice notes transcribed automatically

Use homescreen widgets to capture thoughts quickly

Color-code your notes to help find them later

Swipe to archive things you no longer need

Turn a note into a checklist by adding checkboxes

Easy and fast to use

Google Keep’s interface for both the application and the web version, is minimal and easy to use. You can create a new note in just a few seconds and by adding the app’s widget on your smartphone’s screen makes the whole process even faster.

You can choose between taking a simple note, creating a check-box list, leaving a voice memo or taking a photo. If you want to make the app more colorful in order to help you categorize things easier you could change the note’s color.

There are two different views of your memos, a simple list view where you view the notes on a single column and a grid view. You wont find many and complicated options and the only thing you need to worry about is write in Google Keep what you need before you forget it.

The app’s widget adds your latest notes on your phone’s screen with the Google Keep bar over them for quick access. You could also just add the Keep bar without the notes.

Where to find it

Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0 and above. You can access it’s web version at https://drive.google.com/keep. Google announced that in the coming weeks Google Keep will be directly integrated into Google Drive.

What does it look like?

I took some screenshots of Google Keep app (below) and it’s web version (above).

Application Screenshots

What you see when you first open Google Keep. The UI is really simple.

I’ve added my first note by pressing “Take a note” or the “Add quick note” field.

When adding a list and you want to use checkboxes you should choose this option first.

List view of the notes. You can change it through the options.

We could also choose a Multi-column view of our notes.

The multi-column view is the default view.

The two different screen widgets.

Keep it or leave it?

First of all I’m sure that this is not the final product. Google will add more features to it, I hope without making it hard to use. What I think could make the app better is a way to categorize your notes, like you can do in Evernote.

For those of you who need something simple the you could try out Google Keep and It will probably work for you. But for users that already use Evernote, Google Keep might seem too simple for their needs.

The only way to find out what suits you best is to try both of them. But as I said before, keep in mind that Google will probably add more useful features in Keep and even offer more than you can now find in Evernote or other note tracking applications.